My boxing day started in the kitchen, trying to make something that would resemble the "pastel de nata" tart from the blog "receitas da Luísa" and this is the result. This tart was made especially for the Christmas/Boxing Day party that took place in Margaret's house yesterday :-) and it seemed to have been a success. Tomorrow I'll fly home and bring another tart with me, the rhubarb tart, which my family is a big fan of :-)

I hope you had an excellent Christmas. We had a Christmas eve, in Ireland, with an almost portuguese dinner, a lot of music (including the church music) and some presents. The presents were opened this morning, at a "decent" time (after 9.30am), probably because there's no children in this house yet :-)The Christmas day dinner is the most important family event of this season here so, we went to Tom's parent's house to join his family. After lunch and (lots of) games, we came home to rest for a little bit before we join Boxing Day celebrations tomorrow at Margaret's house :-) and to watch the "Hairspray" & "Once" DVDs that Santa Claus left in my stocking!

Christmas is coming. It's true, it's the 9th December already...and yesterday was the "official ceremony" of lightning up the Christmas tree in our house :-) The tree is a little bit different this year, more simple and natural, with ornaments that came from Portugal (thank you Luísa and ti Qué), France, Denmark and Germany (Tom was in Munich last weekend and brought home some really nice things from the Christmas market), most of them made by hand. Now it's time to make the Christmas cards...

This week was crazy...so much work and "social events" :-) It's incredible but, when we get to December this town comes alive! In terms of work, this is the time to finish off projects, do evaluations, start planning for 2008...in terms of the "social diary", it is suddenly full with Christmas dinners, lunches, snacks, "quizzes" and fundraising for NGO's and, of course, there's some Christmas shopping to do.

In the little time I spent at home, I started a scarf for the frozen days that are coming. It is really fluffy...and super eazy to do! I just wanted a very warm scarf and a photo in yarnstorm was my inspiration - I used the Kathia-Ethnic wool that I bought on sale in Lincraft in Melbourne and I can't wait to finish it and wear it!

I can't belive it...I finally finished this cross-stitch project! :-) What an adventure...a project that should have taken 3/4 weeks to complete, actually took 4 months! During this time, I must say, I had an injury in my right hand (that didn't allow me to do any creative project by hand during the months of September and October) and a 3 and a half weeks holidays during the month of November so, I'm VERY happy for having finished this project (for a very special couple) :-)

When we came back from our three and a half weeks holidays we had a surprise at the end of our garden - a wooden shed, or "little" house, as I call it :-) Tom's dad made the shed for us and Tom's mum painted our garden wooden fences and front door! It was an excelent surprise!

The saídos da concha blog it's one of my favourites and I read it almost every day; last week Concha celebrated her first blog-anniversary by giving away one of her lovely bags and...I was the lucky one! Woohoooo!! Thank you Concha! I loved the bag!